Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering

Bachmann, Maja D.; Nair, Nityan; Flicker, Felix; Ilan, Roni; Meng, Tobias; Ghimire, Nirmal J.; Bauer, Eric Dietzgen; Ronning, Filip; Analytis, James G.; Moll, Philip J. W.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.1602983

Title: Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering

Journal Article · Wed May 24 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Science Advances

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602983· OSTI ID:1414142

^[1]; Nair, Nityan ^[2];

^[2];

^[3]; Meng, Tobias ^[4]; Ghimire, Nirmal J. ^[5];

^[5];

^[5]; Analytis, James G. ^[6]; Moll, Philip J. W. ^[7]

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden (Germany); Univ. of St. Andrews, St. Andrews (United Kingdom)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Tel Aviv Univ., Tel Aviv (Israel)
Technische Univ. Dresden, Dresden (Germany)
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden (Germany)

By introducing a superconducting gap in Weyl or Dirac semimetals, the superconducting state inherits the nontrivial topology of their electronic structure. As a result, Weyl superconductors are expected to host exotic phenomena, such as nonzero-momentum pairing due to their chiral node structure, or zero-energy Majorana modes at the surface. These are of fundamental interest to improve our understanding of correlated topological systems, and, moreover, practical applications in phase-coherent devices and quantum applications have been proposed. Proximity-induced superconductivity promises to allow these experiments on nonsuperconducting Weyl semimetals. Here, we show a new route to reliably fabricate superconducting microstructures from the nonsuperconducting Weyl semimetal NbAs under ion irradiation. Furthermore, the significant difference in the surface binding energy of Nb and As leads to a natural enrichment of Nb at the surface during ion milling, forming a superconducting surface layer (Tc ~ 3.5 K). Being formed from the target crystal itself, the ideal contact between the superconductor and the bulk may enable an effective gapping of the Weyl nodes in the bulk because of the proximity effect. Simple ion irradiation may thus serve as a powerful tool for the fabrication of topological quantum devices from monoarsenides, even on an industrial scale.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC). Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22); USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-06NA25396; AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1414142

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1413726

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-17-21856

Journal Information:: Science Advances, Vol. 3, Issue 5; ISSN 2375-2548

Publisher:: AAASCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 58 works

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Quantum limit transport and destruction of the Weyl nodes in TaAs Ramshaw, B. J.; Modic, K. A.; Shekhter, Arkady Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04542-9	journal	June 2018
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Large surface conductance and superconductivity in topological insulator microstructures Li, Yangmu; Wu, Jie; Camino, Fernando Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 17 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5122789	journal	October 2019
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Nonlocal transport in superconducting heterostructures based on Weyl semimetals Li, Hai; Ouyang, Gang Physical Review B, Vol. 100, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.100.085410	journal	August 2019
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Quantum limit transport and destruction of the Weyl nodes in TaAs Ramshaw, B. J.; Modic, K. A.; Shekhter, Arkady arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1704.06944	text	January 2017
Self-biased current, magnetic interference response, and superconducting vortices in tilted Weyl semimetals with disorder Alidoust, Mohammad arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1811.11765	text	January 2018
Orbital effect and weak localization physics in the longitudinal magnetoresistance of the Weyl semimetals NbP, NbAs, TaP and TaAs Naumann, M.; Arnold, F.; Bachmann, M. D. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1911.04775	text	January 2019

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75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
Material Science
Weyl semi-metals
proximity-induced superconductivity
Majorana-mode
selective ion sputtering
microstructuring

Title: Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering

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